


love, let my nightmares turn into dreams

by strangesmallbard



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28378188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangesmallbard/pseuds/strangesmallbard
Summary: Marisa freezes, one arm still contorted over the bedside table, a thousand memories cycling over in fresh ink stains; Dust makes its terrible way over her flesh, to the flesh behind her, rendered so lovingly.She is home. That’s where she is.**An AU where Marisa wakes up in Mary's world after the events of "The Amber Spyglass." Some years after.
Relationships: Marisa Coulter/Mary Malone
Comments: 18
Kudos: 102





	love, let my nightmares turn into dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Marisa and Mary are such incredible foils, and I'm so glad the show let them meet. This fic primarily takes place in the show universe, assuming that it follows the same ending as the books. This AU is haunting me! Check out my tumblr at the same username if you want to hear more thoughts about it.
> 
> Many, many thanks to Zohra, Rayna, and Onella for their feedback, and Hermione for falling down the Maryisa rabbit hole with me two years ago. 
> 
> Title is from "Free" by Mother, Mother.

The dream starts as it really happened: Marisa is falling.

She is falling. There is nothing, not even palm-pressed solar systems in her eye sockets. Dust sloughs off like dead skin; finally she is free of its tedious revolutions, the strings tying her up and together with—

The monkey screams, teeth poised over her neck to gouge. He claws in her shirt, marks up her chest, and in her Nothing state she knows it’s revenge until she sees his wide, soft eyes. Too soft.

The ground quakes. There is a ground now, chips of asphalt cutting wings into her back. There is a body in the shape of a question mark on a cold slab of concrete and it is her own. No blood, no stingers, no fingernails pried off one by one.

When the monkey yanks at her chest and opens his mouthful of teeth again, he shrieks, _Mother!_

* * *

Marisa wakes up sputtering and crying, shaking and on the verge of a scream. Her hands constrict in cheap sheets and with every breath comes knowing, for certain, where she is. Not her London rooms. Not her childhood bed, or underneath its box spring and lace accoutrements. Not the cave. Not falling. Not falling.

Her head hurts.

In another world—her own—Marisa would need to grace her parlor room to learn the exact time from the clock mounted above her fireplace. In this one, she need only to reach for the iPhone on the bedside table.

There’s a text message:

_Looked at your draft, I think it’s grand! Really! Comments on the drive. Look at mine before review day? There’s a hot cocoa in it for—_

Wednesday, two o’clock in the morning. Her “home” screen is still that pink sunset it had when she first turned it on. She grips the edges of the box until her knuckles scream, wishing like the almighty arm of the Authority on high that she could _—_

An arm constricts over her stomach, warm. Someone hums between her shoulder blades. No, not just someone. Marisa freezes, one arm still contorted over the bedside table, a thousand memories cycling over in fresh ink stains; Dust makes its terrible way over her flesh, to the flesh behind her, rendered so lovingly.

She is home. That’s where she is.

“Hurrumph,” says Mary Malone. She lets go of Marisa’s stomach. Her knees tuck up ever so slightly against her lower back. “Time for coffee already? Jesus. Needs to be hot.”

Then she falls back asleep. Light snoring follows, more breath against Marisa’s prickling neck. She closes her eyes and wills her own breathing to fall in step with Mary’s, one two three one two three. Count sheep. Return Mary’s arm around her waist, feel the grooves and veins between her knuckles. The sheep become golden monkeys. Each one gapes at its little ermine prey in the fields below—

Marisa shoots up, heart a stopper in her throat. She claws at it furiously, unpracticed in the art of tearing herself apart.

“Hmm….I—Marisa?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, stills one hand with the other. She clears mucus from her throat until she can manage: “Go back to sleep. I’m fine.”

Mary twists next to her. Her hand once again leaves Marisa’s stomach, leaves her skin tingling and cold. One. Two. Three—

“Oof, I don’t think that’s so.” Mary tucks hair behind Marisa’s ear, movement so clumsy with sleep she grazes her cheek. She shivers at the tenderness, every atom of her poised to reject it, kick it back against foreign stones.

“Is it the monkey dream again?”

 _Four._ “No.”

“Bad liar.”

“I am an excellent liar.”

Mary laughs softly. “Of course, darling.”

Marisa doesn’t reply. She’s busy trying to talk herself out of shaking. It doesn’t work; Mary extricates herself until they are face-to-face, until Marisa’s dark-adjusted eyes can see the concern in Mary’s reflected back. _Five._

“Stop that.”

“When you tell me what’s wrong.” Mary’s voice is crinkled from sleep. “Or how I can help.”

So simple, that request. She runs her hand back over her throat and finds the skin hurts to touch. “By going back to sleep,” she drawls. She means to sound cruel, but it comes out like a whine. “You know what day it is.”

“Well, exactly.” There’s a rustle. “I’m turning on the light.”

“That’s the opposite of going back to sleep.”

Mary leaves her side entirely and the room comes alive in a swathe of orange. There’s the dresser, which needs an old brass key to open the left drawer over. It has Mary’s old habit, her cross, diaries and things. There’s her bra hanging on the door knob—heat scalds her face. If the servants were to come in right now, well, she’s home, there are no servants at Mary Malone’s house, _her_ house, but really, how careless has she become? In this ramshackle room, a thousand ways to trip over one’s feet and fall right into sin. Foolish to—

 _One. Two. Three._ She pushes a bundled wad of bedsheets against her chest.

“There. Now—ah.”

Marisa blinks away moisture. When her vision clears, there’s Mary’s dear face again, eyes glued to the welt on Marisa’s throat, bedhead sticking up every which way, big shirt askew and one shoulder exposed to the night. She wants to sink her teeth in that shoulder and never let go. She wants—

Light fingers on her collarbone. “Didn’t break the skin this time, I don’t think. We still have some of that cream downstairs, if it hurts.”

“Mary,” she says, tries not to snap. Soothes that would-be, bygone era bite by threading their fingers together. Find the words, put them together in the right order, turn off the feeling that created them. It used to be so easy.

“I…” she begins again, falters too soon. Mary smells like laundry sheets, like the coffee she dreamt about, like the downy underside of a winter coat. She needs a moment. Just one. She squeezes her hand, flickers on a smile. “That would be wonderful.”

Mary nods slowly. She leaves Marisa with a firm kiss on her forehead, and then she’s gone.

She listens to Mary’s footfalls until they’re too far out of reach.

On this same day, but years ago, when everything began and they were closer to strangers, Mary had yelled when she found Marisa drunk on the roof.

 _Wouldn’t it be simpler?_ She had said, wind curling through her pores. Looking straight up at unfamiliar stars. _You have to agree with that, Dr. Malone._

She received no acquiescence, just a hand through the attic window. Another round of yelling. A blanket. A pair of tweezers, which Mary used to pry a splinter from her palm. Then, a calm yet firm assertion that Marisa needs to get help from an outside source, or this won’t work.

Hearing that, wrapped in her borrowed blanket, felt like when Pantalaimon attacked the monkey; like someone had scraped the Dust off her skin again to create a blade capable of rending the soul from self with far more precision than the Subtle Knife.

 _I don’t need help._ Her head had started spinning, from the wine. _I need my daughter._

Mary’s expression flickered between sympathy and frustration, every line on her face betraying that complexity of feeling. It was enthralling to watch her wrestle.

(It still is; Marisa loves to watch her mull over research, pencil in hair. Legs up on the desk, crossed at the knee like a man, shirt all askew. That open shoulder. All so open, ready for a world that only hurts and only consumes.)

 _She’s not here._ Mary landed on sympathy. Careful, guarded sympathy, like she had just discovered that particular flavor. She knew the whole truth about Lyra by that point, about why Lyra wanted nothing to do with her, whether Marisa wanted her to know or not. _She won’t ever be, if we did our jobs right. But you are._

She huffs the same incredulity she felt from years ago now, tearing up again. She lets the wrinkled sheet fall around her waist. The muscles in her throat open back up without her permission. No monkey waits on the end of her bed, eyes too soft. _Ozy,_ she makes herself think. _Ozy, are you there?_

At the window on Mary’s side, there’s a soft whistle. Perhaps they woke up the birds too. As a child her mother's dæmon would make Ozy wait with the birds in the branches, out the window, when Marisa acted out. When they grew up, Marisa threw him outside whenever he pulled too hard at her nightgown. But he still talked to her in their minds, sending those sweet comforts no one else could deny her.

_I’m here, Marisa. I’m here, I’m here. Sleep now, Marisa. I’m as far as I can reach—_

“I’m here,” she whispers now. Her voice is low, low, low. “I’m still here.”

The bird whistles again. Then, nothing at all. Marisa is alone. That won’t do.

* * *

“Oh hello you, feeling better? Your stuff’s on the counter. Tea’ll be ready in a sec.”

The kitchen is too bright, but Mary is simply angelic in front of the electric kettle, in her ratty grey robe she won’t let Marisa replace. Marisa ought to burn the thing to a crisp at the spot. Instead, she basks. Preens, even, when Mary turns her head and offers a lopsided smile.

“I don’t recall asking for tea.”

She flicks the kettle off. “Lucky for you, I had a craving.”

“Hmm.” Marisa drums her fingertips against the countertop, picks up the tube of cream and idly twirls it. “Do you have a craving for anything….else?”

Mary furrows a brow. “For Savlon?”

They look together at the cream tube. Mary seems to comprehend at the same moment Marisa fails to fight red off her cheeks, and copes with that failure by opening the tube and applying its contents on her throat, the base of her neck. She’s also been left a large bandage, very convenient for licking wounds.

For her part, Mary stifles a laugh into a kind of snort and pours their tea. Marisa hears the telltale clink of the sugar spoon, one scoop for each mug.

(Asriel would laugh at her right now. She’d kill him for it.)

“That’s the last big gauze.” She places both their cups on coasters, which are from a set of nine with all the planets from this world. Marisa’s today is Neptune, Mary’s is Pluto. “I know the sleep fighting is more rare these days, but we should put it on the shopping list.“

“Yes, fine. I agree.”

“Alright.”

Marisa takes a sip. “It’s perfect,” she says. “Thank you.”

Mary says nothing in return _._ She watches her from the lip of her mug, hand at the back of her neck. There are dark circles under her eyes. Marisa knows she adores her students, but during final exam season they swarm all her free time like pecking hens. Marisa isn’t looking forward to having a flock of her own.

“Caroline enjoyed my draft,” she says so Mary can’t talk first. “Maybe I ought to try for this publishing cycle after all.”

No smile. Just a sedate nod, a comforting hand on her thigh. “You should. Your work is brilliant, Marisa. It deserves to be seen by people.”

Years of biting her tongue in front of men smart and old and young and stupid, but always _Scholar_ in name, and Dr. Mary Malone says everything she’s ever longed to hear without even thinking first. It ought to frustrate her, make her scream. Instead, Marisa cracks wide open, begins to fall again. “Do you think—Lyra.”

(Lyra—oh _Lyra_ , she hasn’t thought her name yet, not today, Lyra Lyra—)

Mary’s hand moves to her knee, rubs it with a thumb in soothing patterns. “What about Lyra, love?”

“She is nineteen years old today.” Her heart beats hard and fast enough to wrench itself out of her chest. She suspects it wants to. She takes another sip to convince it otherwise.

“A young woman.” Mary tilts her head. “I can’t believe it.”

“Still in school, hopefully.” Static gathers in her head, hiding a phonograph of the little girl Marisa never met. “Learning about the world, about…well, you know how life is when you’re a young woman. A changing prism, every day.”

( _I am nothing like you,_ the child still shouts.)

“I was in the convent by then,” Mary muses. “Eager to understand God’s will. Eager to forget my friend Doris’s legs.”

Marisa nearly chokes on her tea. She rolls her eyes at the impish expression on Mary’s face, leans in a bit closer. “Well, you at least understand His Will now.”

“Here, here,” Mary salutes with her teacup. “To outliving the Big Man upstairs and living in sin.”

She laughs, a bark of a laugh that would not become any lady, thinks of their warm bed upstairs and the promise of hot chocolatl if she reads her classmate’s work and icy panic grips her stomach before she even knows panic is there, threatening to close her throat again. I am nothing like you. I am nothing like you.

When she speaks, her voice is so very small. “Could Lyra, do you think—could she be proud of me now?”

Mary puts on a gentle expression, the one she saves for baby animals they find on the side of the road and simply must deliver to safety. She waits.

One. Two. Three.

“The only thing I asked of her...at the end, was to live. But I want to know the answer. I suppose I always will. I am her mother.”

That word still sounds wrong in her mouth. She supposes that will always be true as well. She takes two shaky sips of her tea. _Four._

Mary brow furrows again. That lovely struggle displayed all over her face for anyone to see. For Marisa to see. She settles on something Marisa can’t recognize. _Five. Six._ “If the answer was no, could you still keep going?

She stares. Drums her nails against the counter again, avoids Mary’s gaze. When she woke up in this world without Ozy, without Lyra, without Asriel, it was as though she were a compass and someone (Metatron _,_ in one last act of vengeance—) plucked each hand off. There was nothing beating in her but malice in its purest form, enough to engulf the sky in smoke and haze. She was lost. And she didn’t _care._

Then: all this. Built by her own hands, not due to the Authority’s decree or in spite of Him. All this, hers and hers alone and not alone at all.

Marisa looks up. She finds warm, blue eyes—who knew blue eyes could be warm, hers have always been glacial—and wonders if her own face is Ozy’s face right now, superimposed.

She braces herself on the counter, pushes aside the Savlon tube, and kisses Mary Malone.

Who, for her part, holds her cheek very gently and kisses her back. She pulls away only to trail a finger down Marisa’s jaw. “Thank you for that, but I’m not sure I follow.”

“I’m here,” she says. “I’m still here.”

Mary smiles again, warm and sure at the edges. That’s her favorite one. “Glad to hear it. Are you ready to take our tea in bed? I’ve got an appointment at nine and I’m going to need you to confiscate my phone so I don’t try to change it.”

There’s that whistle at the window, slow and crooning this time. Mary doesn't seem to notice or if she does, she isn’t perturbed. Marisa glances outside, through the twin couches in the living room. There’s nothing there but trees and night, though not for long.

She stands up. “I was actually going to ask if you would like to take the morning.”

“Oh thank goodness. Absolutely.”


End file.
